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A review by msdixon
The Man in the Gray Flannel Skirt by Jon-Jon Goulian
3.0
I read this book after reading an interview with Jon-Jon and very much thinking that I wanted to have a conversation with him at a bar someday. The book reads similarly, which is his greatest asset. He is instantly likeable.
Memoirs are weird, which is why I choose often to not read the genre; many of its authors think they are much more interesting than they are. Jon-Jon is the black sheep of the family and a straight dude who wears a skirt most of the time. Otherwise he is just as neurotic as any of your citydwelling friends, and has lovely anecdotes to relate to that experience.
I want to give him props on his exceptionally tight elliptical structure, as well; each chapter begins as it ends with a flashback or series of flashbacks in the middle to explicate. It's a sci fi writer's trick, and it works here as a hook marvelously. By the last 10 pages or so I couldn't put it down. I only wished that by the end of the book I had found Jon-Jon's experience more worthy of a book (So you wear a skirt! That's cool, what else you got?), as his writing certainly deserves more exposure.
Memoirs are weird, which is why I choose often to not read the genre; many of its authors think they are much more interesting than they are. Jon-Jon is the black sheep of the family and a straight dude who wears a skirt most of the time. Otherwise he is just as neurotic as any of your citydwelling friends, and has lovely anecdotes to relate to that experience.
I want to give him props on his exceptionally tight elliptical structure, as well; each chapter begins as it ends with a flashback or series of flashbacks in the middle to explicate. It's a sci fi writer's trick, and it works here as a hook marvelously. By the last 10 pages or so I couldn't put it down. I only wished that by the end of the book I had found Jon-Jon's experience more worthy of a book (So you wear a skirt! That's cool, what else you got?), as his writing certainly deserves more exposure.